So You Want To Be The Very Best, Like No One Ever Was? [Pt1]

“Welcome to the world of Pokémon!” This is the introductory line that begins so many fantastic adventures in the Pokémon franchise. When I say franchise, and not game series, I mean it. The world of Pokémon is huge, even bigger than you may realize…

Choose wisely

There are so many different forms of Pokémon media to enjoy, and since it’s all within the same world, each one helps you better understand the other. Here are just some examples of how much of a multimedia franchise Pokémon is. It includes…

• Core video game series
• Spin-offs
• Crossovers
• Multiple manga series
• Anime series
• Feature-length movies
• OVAs, and other shorts
• Children’s story books
• Educational and puzzle books
• An insane amount of merchandise

Comparing existing Pokemon areas to their actual Japanese counterparts.

What does this mean for your Japanese? Well if you’re already a Pokémon fan… everything! You have an instant, massive library of multiple types of media at your disposal, with the advantage of being familiar with the franchise. Whether you want to read picture books or manga, play a video game (most have kana/kanji options by the way), watch anime, or even research rare merchandise, you can do all of it with a Pokémon-based education. There are even vocabulary lists based on the games to help you along. I can guarantee being familiar with the media will make you feel all the more comfortable with it, and all the more pumped to stick with it.

Pokémon media is EVERYwhere

Here’s my personal experience using the franchise to help me with my Japanese. So back when Red and Blue came out in North America, I jumped on with Pokémania and played Blue all the way through (in English) with my trusty Squirtle. Years later, it was mostly my only exposure to the franchise except for a few anime episodes. That was until I met Animom, the Pokémon queen. With a rekindled interest in the world of catching them all, I wanted to try my first full length game in pure Japanese. So I picked Soul Silver for Nintendo DS. Had this been my first time in the Pokémon world, with my level of Japanese at the time I would have been quite lost.

Gentlemon, let us master the Japanese language!

So right away, knowing how the game mechanics worked and what the general plot was provided a huge confidence boost and got me very excited to jump into my first JRPG in its native language. Then when I came across some Pokémon picture books, I already had context on my side before I even opened the front cover. Same goes for the manga and the anime. Because I was familiar with the world of Pokémon, I was able to easily have fun trying out all the different types of media it has to offer.

You too can get this feeling learning Japanese with Pokémon!

Even the overall theme of dedicating yourself to the journey you have set out for is very inspiring. I can’t think of many other franchises that offer this much variety within the same world. And because it’s normally aimed at a younger audience, I also find it to be an incredibly accessible universe to immerse yourself in on your own Japanese journey to be the very best, like no one ever was.

Coming Soon to Animaritime 2013!

On a related note, I’ll be doing my first public presentation ever at Animaritime 2013, along with Animom. As you may have guessed, the topic is Pokémon and its evolution as a franchise. If you’re attending this event, please leave a comment or send me a message. I would absolutely love to meet a reader in person! There will even be a section on Japanese-only elements of Pokémon, so if you’re in the Fredericton, NB at the time, please say hello!

In this series we’ll be covering the various Pokemon merchandises out there and how you can pull fun Japanese from it, and so forth. Stay Tuned for our next segment on the anime side of Pokemon.

 

Power Up Your Japanese

At last, the day has come for me to walk down the monolingual road. Basically what this means using a Japanese dictionary to look up unknown Japanese words. This is an experiment I’ve been doing over the last little while, and now that I have a system that’s working, I’d like to share it with you, the wonderful reader. It feels like I’ve just powered up to a whole new level. Perhaps in time, it will be kinda like…

This could be you.

I admit, I really did think of the whole Super Saiyan transformation seen above while undertaking this project. In all seriousness though, if you’re looking to make this leap, I would highly recommend having a good handle on kanji meanings, and having a vocabulary level of at least JLPT N4 or Core 2000. If anything, the kanji is the most useful because it will give you a general idea of what’s going on. While taking this plunge, I also took the advice I’ve seen on many blogs: start by looking up words you already know. This is why I dubbed my experiments The Journey of 公園 (public park). This was a word I already knew, and I liked the symbolism of it. It would be like a walk in the park…

Miller Point 公園

How did this journey begin? Well, it’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Learning With Texts. It’s a huge time saver, and more effective on top of it. So naturally, I adapted LWT to monolingual use. A lot of this stuff can easily be done with just an SRS like Anki, it’s just that something like LWT will take a lot of the tedious steps away for you. If you do use LWT, first you’ll want to change your dictionaries. Have a look at my LWT post for how to do that. There are a few good ones out there, but Yahoo dictionary is my personal choice, and is really all I use. The URL for the monodic version of Yahoo! is: http://dic.yahoo.co.jp/detail?p=###&stype=0&dtype=0. (As you’ve probably noticed, you just replace the term being searched with ### in the URL.) If you’re doing this manually and not with LWT, you want to select 国語 as the dictionary type. You could also try out Goo, Wikitionary, or Sanseido. First let’s take a look at what typical monodic results look like on Yahoo…

For example…

So first you have the term itself with the reading, まつり and then with kanji 祭り. On the far right are other terms that contain the word or part of the word in it. It can be good to check that first because sometimes the results don’t always show what you’re looking for. After the term you see a numbered list. These are various definitions of the word. Some of the ones that have text in green after them are rare literary definitions so you likely won’t want to include those. As a guideline, I only include 2-3 definitions per term. You’ll also see some example sentences in 「brackets」. Take note that the word itself is replaced by a ― in the examples. This seems to be quite common in Japanese dictionaries. In the case of verbs and other words that change like that, only the root is replaced by a ―. And that’s the quick and dirty on how Yahoo!辞書 works.

Now the magic begins. Start with a sentence that contains only words you know. It can come from anywhere, even a Google search. Enter that one sentence into LWT, and look up each word with your monolingual dictionary to create the terms. I make sure to have the definition and reading as separate fields, unlike I used to do. I’ll show you why later on. Once you start adding terms, you’ll probably have some words in the definition you don’t know yet. There are a few ways you can go about this

Selecting a term.

One way is branching (jumping). This basically means you look up the word in the definition you don’t know, and find the monolingual definition to that one, and look up words in that definition you don’t know, and so on… The problem with trying to create extra SRS cards this way is that this branching can get out of hand. For example I ended up getting something like 40 cards based on one sentence. If it works for you then go for it, but if not…

Bird is the word when it comes to branching..

You can also try a transitional sort of card for your terms. If the monolingual definition makes sense to you, then great–leave it that way. If you’re still not sure of what the word means, most words in the 和英 (Japanese->English) dictionary actually feature short bilingual definitions of the word in question. The best part about this is while the English part is usually a rough translation of the word, the Japanese part tends to be an actual explanation. Not only does this still include Japanese text, but you can often get the nuance of the words this way and hopefully get an aha moment when reading it. Even when doing this, I often add the full J>J definition first, as seen below.

Mixed definition, mostly Japanese.

Every term I end up with has two different card formats in Anki. One tests me on the reading of the term, showing the meaning etc in the question portion. The other type tests me on the meaning of the word, showing me the reading in the question portion. This is so I can handle these two elements separately  There’s an idea that every card should only have 1 question and 1 answer. By following that idea, I find I can learn cards quickly and effectively. At the moment about half my cards are pure monolingual, and the other half are transitional.

Reading

Meaning

So when you don’t have any English to compare your answer to, how do you grade yourself? What I came up with goes something like this: If you understand the definition, and your idea of what the word means makes sense in the example sentence, then it’s correct. Simple as that. If you follow the guidelines above for deciding between pure monolingual and transitional cards, then really every one should be a winner.

Can you tell I really like the whole “road” imagery when it comes to learning Japanese? This is the 公園 behind Desbrisay Museum.

Now time for some bonus stuff! If you’re looking to quiz yourself even further in a monolingual environment, give Yahoo!きっず学習－漢字 a shot. There are lessons on other topics like science or even English on there to test yourself from a Japanese perspective. Or maybe you’ve got enough 国語（こくご） and your goal now is to cut down on English? Start by figuring out what your biggest time suckers are and either limit or get rid of them altogether. For example, I know certain websites are after my time, so I’ve become a big fan of Chrome Nanny and Leech Block, for Chrome and Firefox respectively. Use it wisely!

 

Steam Powered Learning

If you’re not familiar with Steam, it’s a digital distribution platform for games on PC, Mac, and Linux. And it’s available in Japanese. Unlike with many consoles (except the Playstation 3 and PSPs, thank you Sony) there are no region locks of any kind when it comes to playing games in Japanese. It’s simply a matter of changing the language.

One thing to keep in mind though is while many games are available in full, beautiful Japanese, not all titles are. And where some games such as Skyrim have 100% Japanese text and voice acting, others like Portal 2 for example, only have text translated. Then you have the rare Japanese developer, ie SquareEnix, where the titles are actually originally in Japanese. As shown in the picture below, you can always check this before purchasing a title, or even try a demo if one is available.

The * indicates languages that also includes voice acting. Notice that 日本語 is present, but isn’t starred.

This is a really great source of games for people learning Japanese, not only because of the lack of a region lock, but also because delivery is instant. I remember looking in the mailbox every day in hopes of my order of 二の国 for PS3 being in there. With Steam, you can be enjoying the time sucking vampire that is The Sims 3, in Japanese, within minutes.

If you need some titles to get you started, here are a few I’d especially recommend, along with how Japanese they are.

• Skyrim (Full voice acting, all text and menus translated)
• The Sims 3 (Voices are in Simlish as always, all text and menus translated. You need to do a little hack to get Japanese to show up though.)
• Civilization V (English voices, all text and menus translated)
• Portal 2 (English voices, all text and menus translated)
• The Last Remnant (Demo available, full voice acting, all text and menus translated.)

Being able to get Japanese games on Steam without having to worry about region locks or even shipping has made my gaming time skyrocket. May it do the same for you!

 

Well Hello there Amazon.Co.JP. You now have kindles and ebooks?

I am a Techno Junkie. I have come to this conclusion today. I was one for a long time, but I just didn’t buy things when they first were released. As a run down: I have a Iphone 3gs, a Kindle Fire 1, a lenovo x201 Tablet laptop, and a dell Desktop PC.

I read a lot of English on all of those devices. I’ve been trying to fix that with my kindle. I’ve been downloading Japanese editions through Amazon.com and ‘reading’ them on my iphone (as Kindle fire does not support tradition Japanese text yet).

I also browse amazon.co.jp a lot to see cute things that I’d never get… or won’t I?! KINDLE was just officially released in Japan. This means, Amazon.co.jp now not only has an ebook section, but also can be surfed in English. Yes, I know, not all of us want to do that in english but I was afraid to spend my money without knowing EXACTLY what I was doing. So, the site is in English with Japanese titles.
So let me unfold my day to you for a funny haha moment.

1) I discover .co.jp has ebooks. I immediately try to buy them and realize I’m regionally locked for my kindle. I contact amazon through online chat to see If i have to buy a Japanese kindle to be able to buy Japanese ebooks.

2) Through the help of the tech support, I found out that I needed to ‘move’ my kindle address to a Japanese one (I’ll explain how to get a legitimate Japanese address in a little bit)

3) Through the help of exploring, I realized my bank allows international purchases.

4) I create a amazon.co.jp account using my english billing address, my us credit card, and purchase the cheapest book I could find. (i just wanted to test this of course).

5) Sit in my glory of now owning a Japanese Ebook that I purchased for 1.25$USD without paying for shipping (obviously) and not needed a Japanese bank account.

Steps on how to get this working for you!

-1)Have a kindle or a kindle app. (sorta duh at this moment) You don’t even need to pay for it if you have a smart phone!!!

0)Have a Japanese Amazon account (you do not need a Japanese physical address for this) You can now surf Amazon.co.jp in english. It’s at the top, “in english”. Pretty easy to see as it’s the ONLY English on the page.

1) Check your device. It may be like my kindle fire which does not yet support Japanese tradition text. It’ll show Japanese on the browser but cannot be formatted to read the way Japanese text is done. (In columns)
You can check your device on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.jp. I know the Kindle apps are all up to date and will support it. So if you have an iphone, ipad itouch, or android products, you should be good to go as long as your apps are up to date. Also, any of the Paper-whites will accept it. I’m unsure about kindle fire 1/2 and HD. I would also like to insert nerd rage right here about the lack of ability to read on my Kindle fire 1.

2a physical Kindles) If you bought your kindle in the US, go to amazon.com and click on your account>>manage kindle>>country settings. This is where you need a valid Japanese address. I know jlist doesn’t mind you using their physical address but if you want to go through the hassle of doing a mail forwarding service for when you buy real items, go ahead and use a service like Tenso. It doesn’t matter if you have access to this, because it is for your KINDLE, which is all digital anyways. Changing your kindle address does not change your physical address with Amazon.

2b amazon kindle app) Sign into your amazon.jp.co account and go to account>>manage kindle>>country settings. It will be currently unknown. Switch it to a valid Japanese Address! I personally used Tenso to get one. (Thanks to delenir for testing this out for me on his android app)

3) Make sure your bank allows international charges. My first card was declined and I received a call from them pretty quickly to make sure some hooligan didn’t steal my card to buy Japanese books! I checked with my other bank before trying to charge it and they accepted it. I later checked my bank account and saw that it was already taken out of my balance. I literally screamed for joy when I saw that I only spent $1.25USD  on a full, 200 page book. (200 real pages, not no kindle ‘locations’).

4) read to your hearts content assuming you’ve done -1-3. I buy everything through my browser as my kindle and my iphone app’s store is still the Amazon.com version.

Now, the same can be said for those learning English with Japanese kindles. This process was actually created for them as many Japanese citizens (according to amazon) bought kindles and have been buying through amazon.com. This allowed them to merge their english libraries into their supported Japanese libraries and buy Japanese ebooks to their heart’s content. Thanks to this wonderful system, we Japanese language learners can go the other way! MAWHAHAHAHA!

Again, a lot of you may say why buy books when I can get so much free text online. Some people my friend.. just like to read books, with plots, by real published authors, in real (digital) paper. Also, I don’t mind spending 1.25$USD on a book. That’s like…. crack cocaine to my eyeballs.

 

Japanese Audio/subs on US Blue Ray Disks

If you were like me, and completely unaware of it, it might upset you just a hair to know that beautifully done Japanese was within your fingertips for potentially some of your favorite movies, or at least movies you’re willing to watch. A handful of BD( Blue ray Disk) movies from America is set up with pesky ‘hidden’ audio tracks in a few more languages.

So First off, here is a list of some well known blue ray movies from America that have hidden Japanese audio(sub) tracks presented on a forum that I’ve pulled here.

• Appleseed Exmachina : Audio
• Batman Begins : Subtitles / Audio
• Batman Gotham Knight : Subtitles / Audio
• Beetlejuice : Subtitles / Audio
• Blade Runner : Subtitles
• Bourne Trilogy, the (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Constantine : Subtitles / Audio (need to put player settings to Japanese)
• Dark Knight, the (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Death Race (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Broly double feature : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Dead Zone/World’s Strongest : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z History of Trunks/Bardock Father of Goku : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Tree of Might/Lord Slug : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z Cooler double feature- : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z: Super Android 13 / Bojack Unbound : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z: Broly Triple Feature : Audio
• Dragon Ball Z: Fusion Reborn / Wrath of the Dragon : Audio
• Diebuster : Audio
• Dirty Harry : Subtitles / Audio
• Eraser : Subtitles / Audio
• Every Which Way But Loose : Subtitles / Audio
• Final Fantasy VII Advent Children Complete : Audio
• First Knight : Subtitles / Audio
• Freedom : Audio
• Gauntlet, the : Subtitles / Audio
• Gunbuster : Audio
• Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Philospher’s Stone : Subtitles / Audio
• Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban : Subtitles / Audio
• Hellboy II (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• How the west was won : Subtitles
• Hulk (2003) : Subtitles / Audio
• Interview with the Vampire : Subtitles / Audio
• Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade : Audio
• Kill Bill Vol 1 : Subtitles
• Kill Bill Vol 2 : Subtitles
• Kingdom of Heaven : Subtitles
• La Haine (EU) : Subtitles
• Letters From Iwo Jima : Audio
• Lost Boys; the : Subtitles
• Matrix Ultimate collection, the : Subtitles / Audio (need to put player settings to Japanese)
• Mummy Trilogy, the (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Natural Born Killers : Subtitles / Audio
• Ocean’s 11 : Subtitles / Audio
• Ocean’s 12 : Subtitles / Audio
• One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest : Subtitles
• One Piece Movie 8: The Desert Princess and the Pirates – Adventures in Alabasta : Audio
• Outbreak : Subtitles / Audio
• Paprika : Audio
• Perfect Storm : Subtitles / Audio
• Samurai 7 : Audio
• Serenity (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Shinobi Heart Under Blade : Audio
• Signs : Subtitles / Audio
• SOS! Tokyo Metro Explorers The Next : Audio
• Speed Racer (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Sweeney Todd (EU/HK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Tekkon Kinkreet : Audio
• V for vendetta : Subtitles / Audio
• Van Helsing (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Wings Of Honneamise, the : Subtitles / Audio
• Wanted (UK) : Subtitles / Audio
• Yukikaze : Audio
• Zodiac – Director’s Cut (EU/AU) : Subtitles / Audio

You can also, simply search the Blue ray web site and use filters to find dvd’s from your country with Japanese audio and subs.

Out of these, I personally have bought V for Vendetta and Batman Begins, because that is the only ones in the store from the list. They were a lowly $10 a piece. That’s a nice price tag for Japanese language, movie I like, and quality of Blue Ray.

However, now I shall talk about the more saddening parts. When I came home super excited about watching Batman and V, I popped them in my play station 3 without any hesitation.

Where was the Japanese? I got really upset, I couldn’t find them, on either video. So I went online, and most people who could see it had either a Japanese region Blue ray player, or had set their PS3 to Japanese. Well, this is where I was getting sad, simply because I had my PS3 set to Japanese. I decided not to give up, as many people wouldn’t talk about it if it weren’t true, so I delved into my PS3 settings and realized there was a setting for default language of the actual Blue ray disks themselves. After popping that setting in Japanese, my disks then played in Japanese and had both audio and subs.

I wasn’t impressed with the subs for V for Vendetta because they weren’t exact subs. The audio was really good however, and didn’t distract me from the goodness of the movie. I really like the voice actor for V too. I haven’t watched Batman Begins just yet, but I’m looking forward to see who they have voicing Batman.

So if you have a BD player that isn’t from Japan, go ahead and check to see if there is a language, default setting, that can switch it to Japanese, and make sure to set the BD settings in your PS3 to Japanese as well.

In my area, a lot of these bds were between $10-20 a piece. That’s a pretty decent price, if you consider what it would take to get a Japanese BD from Japan sent over! I hope everyone enjoys this knowledge if it is new for you, as I certainty was super happy to find out myself! Interview with the Vampire up next! yay!

 

My Adventure Pack

Hello again everyone! This is my first post as an official co-writer of the blog! Today I’ll be writing about my Adventure Pack. What in the HFIL could that be? I’ll show you… with photos!!

So basically it’s my manbag, full of Japanese immersion materials. I have actually tried various receptacles of all shapes and sizes and found this one, a 10 inch netbook case, to be ideal at the moment! The purpose of such a collection is that whenever going out of the house, I can grab this with confidence that part of my immersion environment can come with me. The best part is, it’s self-sustained. There is a handy spot to put the charges for all devices, so no matter what I know I always have access.

The power that’s inside

So here’s what’s usually inside:

• Android phone (Anki, some LWT access, converted videos, mix of music and audio rips, access to Japanese sites, twitter, Aedict dictionary)
• Kindle (Japanese materials that have gone through LWT, most blogs about language learning that I read are synced to this via Calibre too. The battery life in insane on this thing, lasting for a few weeks easily.)
• Nintendo DS (Games in Japanese can be hard to find on Android, especially with the production value that you can find on a console. The DS fills in this gap in abundance–one of the greatest platforms to exist!)
• Manga (Typically I take a browsing style approach to reading manga rather than focusing on each and every page/word. An example of extensive vs. intensive reading.)
• Printed materials (LWT printouts can be easier to go through in print because of the size of an 8×11 page, and the colour which would be lacking on the Kindle. Here is an opposite of intensive vs. extensive reading!)
• Chargers and cables (The icing on the cake, this means I will never run out of power for my equipment.)

Media recommendation: あいのり/Ainori (Reality Show)

All aboard the love wagon!

Something else I’d like to start doing is including a media recommendation with each post. It could be a game, drama, anime, website, anything. And of course, an explanation of why it’s especially useful will be included! This week it’s a reality show called あいのり/Ainori. The premise of the show should be familiar to the western audience. They take a group of single men and women, and fly them out to another country (the one I watched was Cambodia). Through an interesting tourist experience, they explore the country together, getting to know one another. If someone gets to really like one of the other members, they can arrange to confess their feelings by offering a pair of tickets back to Japan. The next morning, that person responds by either declining and returning the tickets, or making things official with a kiss.

The funny thing is, I never really watched these shows in English. But the familiar concept makes it easier to get into. This show also has stylized text for EVERY line of dialogue, and then some, making it easier to understand if you have some vocabulary behind you, and/or know some kanji meanings. It’s also very interesting to see another country through the eyes of this group. It was these two factors that really sucked me in to the show, watching anxiously until the last episode.

What about you? How do you keep up your immersion environment on the go? Please leave your comments below! And if you end up watching any episodes of あいのり, please tell me what you thought of it! See you next week!

 

Ipod Touch/Apple Immersion

This past Tuesday we had a great guest author come in and do a post on Android Immersion. Today I decided to talk about immersion on the Ipod Touch. I’m sure this could easily extend to iphone and ipad users alike as well. Ultimately you can obtain immersion in many different ways, but these little devices sure make it a little easier.

Wow, that's fanboy at its finest

While I wouldn’t go anywhere near as far as that guy, I will say that I use my ipod on a daily basis. Its always on my hip, just like my phone. It has its own share of annoyances and problems, but overall, I enjoy it as a tool for immersion. Its not the only device I use either, but it is the only one that I would be pretty sad without.

What you should have on your device?

In order to access the variety of apps you’ll need your device and the app store. You can just as equally download iTunes and browse through the app store through the program. I personally find it easier to search through the iTunes program because you can choose similar apps/podcasts to browse too, but then I search it on my ipod device on its app store app and download it there. For those of you like me, we find the whole syncing issue once you had to reformat your computer a big turn off. So I don’t sync anymore.

Music!

To the joy of a lot of us, especially those who really want to buy and support our favorite Japanese artists, there are actually a good amount of Japanese music available for download, including singles and albums. You can also put your mp3s onto your device through itunes or other applications other there.

Podcasts!

There are tons of really fun and useful podcasts out there. I personally do not get podcasts that are intended for language learning. I get podcasts that are real Japanese podcasts instead. Here are some of the ones I enjoy:

Female Voices Only Podcasts: I have many of these, because I’m a female and choose to listen to females over males. I also use them for shadowing, and shadowing males isn’t always good since they tend to use endings that aren’t very feminine.

Love Nature Episode (FM Fukuoka): These podcasts are by a single speaker and are tales of her nature experiences. This one is I want to say roughly 3 minutes a piece and there are lots of podcasts made by her.

もぉともスタイル (OpDi by PPL): This is actually a video podcast feature two females. I’ve seen them talk about food and decor amounts other things. Generally they record at the site they’re reviewing so the background noises can be a little annoying if you’re trying to hear them sometimes. I still enjoy them though and there are a handful of podcasts that are about 5-8 mins long.

ねえ、ねえ、聞いて!: This podcast is adorable. A single female does many episodes that are almost 15 mins each.

ラジオ　「女子だけ体育館に集合！！」: This podcast is about a group of girls. They can get crazy loud at times, but their conversations are laid back and fun.

松捕亜弥のオールナイト二ッポン「二ッポン放送」: This is another really cute podcast that is roughly 8ish mins long each. I’m not always sure what she’s talking about but its fun to listen to her voice alone.

川嶋あい勇気の唄「二ッポン放送」: This is a poem podcast. They are very short, but beautiful to listen to. If you like poetry readings to soft music, then this is the podcast for you.

Male or Mixed Podcasts:

エフエムくらしき「拝、ボーズ!!」：podcasts lasting anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours! Lots of listening here. They talk about all sorts of things.

Junk Podcast: This one is most always all male and very funny.Look into if you like comedy.

Games!

I could go into a long long listing of games that I play on my ipod, but really there are only a few that are really the ticket to get started in. As a side note, a lot of these games are set up for multiple languages, and it follows whatever your phone’s language is set as. So this is a great way to make sure you stay immersed by setting your phone to Japanese.

Countries Top Apps! (blue icon, CTA lettering skewed over a man jumping and blue background): This app is awesome. You just select country and go down to Japan. Once there, you can choose a category, and then an app. It will redirect you to the store app where you can download it. Sometimes its buggy and sometime the app will not be available (for instance its an ipad app that’s not on the touch or phone and visa versa). I’ve found lots of games this way and other apps.

ぴよ盛り: This game I just could not live without. I have a high score of 94 and its very addictive. No there isn’t much Japanese in it but it still counts!

Kana Battle: This app is a really fun game on battling out your ability to do your kana tables. There are a few modes to choose from and its free.

I’m not really going to go over all the really cool dictionaries and learning apps out there like Anki, dropbox, and so on because they have already gotten covered at some point or another and because you can easily research all that in English, but I will say that I personally just use the internet on it to search for words instead of a dictionary app itself.

There are all sorts of games out there too, dating sims, story books, even cute little mushroom games, so keep your eyes peeled and don’t be afraid to search the app store with Japanese words. There are lots of cat related stuff even and that just takes one kanji to bring up tons of searches.

Movies and Shows!

Crunchyroll: This is a great app to have to view anime, drama, and a few movies on the fly. Only downfall is the lack of ability to take off subs.

The store has other movies in it, though I do not use it for those means, and finding credible sources on the internet about how to convert video files and get them on there is just as shady in some ways. If anyone knows of a legit, legal, good way of doing it, let me know in the comments below, because I’d really like to know myself.

Conclusions and tips:

Keeping your itouch ready to go is really easy if you keep charging stations everywhere, or even purchase a docking station to listen to your music much louder. I have a charging cord on my computer, in my bedroom, and in my car. Makes life really easy.

I personally use a small protection case and do not use a screen cover. I’m careful and haven’t had anything happen to it so far. Grab some headphones to go and you’re ready for some action! The life of the battery says it lasts for about 8 hours, but I find that I kill it much fast often because I’m playing games and listening to music all the time.

Have fun! Comment and question below!

Upcoming posts will tell you how to set your phones/devices into target language and set up an international keyboard so keep a heads up!

 

Android Immersion

Meet your new little green friend

If there is one single piece of equipment that has absolutely revolutionized language learning, it’s mobile computers. Whether we’re talking about smartphones or tablets, they have become a true all-in-one tool for your immersion needs. My favorite mobile operating just so happens to be Google Android, and today I’ll be showing you how a single Android device can be all you need to create a Japanese immersion environment anywhere.

O HAI! I will make you awesome at Japanese.

Now don’t get me wrong, in my Japanese action pack I have paper books, a DS, and those sorts of things too, but there’s something appealing about the idea of a single device that fits in my pocket being able to provide me everything I need for my immersion environment. So with that in mind, I’ll be showing you how you can get your Android device fully equipped with comics, music, audio, video, articles, stories, SRSing, and even games in Japanese.

They have the Internet on computers now?

What should you have on your device?

The Android Market has a huge library of software available, with no shortage of great tools to help you with your Japanese. Here are some free, must-have applications for your mobile device. (Click on the title to view it on the Market. You can actually install them on your device remotely from your PC!)

I have the POWER... of native Japanese media.

AnkiDroid – One program that should need to introduction–fully supported on Android! You can easily sync with your decks with the push of a button, taking them with you wherever you go! The VAST majority of my SRS reps are done on a mobile device. Laying down, lunch time at work, waiting in line–anywhere. Having this tool as a mobile app is worth the price of a device 3 times over! You seriously won’t know how you lived without it before. By sure to also install Aedict, Japanese dictionary that can actually integrate with Anki.

QQPlayer - Video player compatible with many formats, and very mobile friendly. I would recommend using Miro Video Converter on your PC to convert the files first to ensure smooth playback. You can actually select formats that are specifically friendly to Android. Amazingly there is little to no quality loss, but for whatever reason doing the conversion greatly improves playback.

Google Reader – To subscribe to Japanese RSS feeds such as the ever-entertaining maru, or to catch up on your favorite blogs with great Japanese learning tips…

Aldiko – Simply the best eReader application for Android, supports epub, doc, pdf to name a few (and supports Japanese text too of course). The great thing about eReaders is how it just keeps your place automatically. Just load up the app and in half a second you’ve got an electronic book, opened right where you left off. This app is highly customizable for things like background color, fonts, and even separately controlled brightness. It makes reading in any language a thing of pure convenience. I like getting familiar with traditional stories, if you’re looking for an easy place to get started. (It’s amazing how often other media references these tales!) There are many good places to find stories, and Aldiko is quite good at adapting to whatever format you import, so give it a try!

Droid Comic Viewer – Excellent comic viewer for Android! There are actually some legitimate sources for getting comics, or you can take a plunge and create your own scans.

Hotmix Radio/JapanFM - A France based streaming radio service that among many genres, just so happens to have an all-Japanese station AND an Android app to tune in. It’s a great way to discover new bands, to just easily tune into non-stop music, this is a must for your device. Just be careful if you’re using this over your mobile network as it can add up to a massive bill. Probably best to only use it on wifi!

Songbird/Stock music player – For the most part, whatever your built-in audio player is should be just fine. Music is of course one of the obvious choices for audio on your device. There are many ways to discover great new bands, such as tuning in to JapanFM, or looking up similar artists with a service like LastFM.

Something else I’ve been successful with is mixing in audio rips from drama and anime in with the music. It actually ends up feeling like listening to a radio station, going back and forth between music and dialogue. First, rip the audio to mp3 with a program like Free Video to MP3 converter, then split the files into a length of your choice (I’d recommend 2-5 minutes) with a program such as Slice Audio File Splitter. If you’re noticing a big volume difference between the music and the ripped audio try this: Copy all the files to your device, and then put them all through MP3 Gain. What this does is lowers or increases the volume of all your audio to make them the same. The help file is actually very helpful when it comes to explaining how to do it correctly! I would recommend only doing this to the copies on your device, rather than the originals since the change is permanent.

Games - Suffice to say there are games in Japanese on Android, especially if you can set your device’s language to Japanese. (For example, my tablet supports many languages including Japanese, but many phones here in Canada only support English, French and often Chinese.) It’s the sort of thing that’s very much left to personal taste, so feel free to explore the market on this one!

Which device is for me?

There are certainly many choices for devices, especially when it comes to size and connectivity! Handhelds, small tablets, big tablets, wifi, mobile networks, oh my! There are certainly ups and downs to each combination. Having tried a few, let me give you comparisons!

This little guy is waiting for you, but on which device!?

Handheld – For Android (unlike with say, the iPod), handheld usually means a smartphone. Let me tell you, the convenience of having an always available Internet connection quickly becomes a must. The only downside is the bill of course! This size is certainly more discreet than a tablet, especially for things like using Anki while waiting in line and so on. Having something that can literally fit in your pocket makes it a true bring-everywhere device.

Small (~7″) tablets – This size is in between even the largest cell phones and a full tablet. If it weren’t for the fact that at this time, no true cell phone has this form factor, I would say it’s the one to rule them all. If they had a cell phone of this size that could still accept regular voice calls and text messages, you wouldn’t need anything else (except maybe a DS!). If you’re only getting one device this could be a good compromise between portability and screen real estate, but if you already have a cell phone with a large screen, you’ll probably find it isn’t bigger enough to feel advantageous as a second device. Which brings us to…

Large (~10″) tablets – What a full sized tablet lacks in being discreet, it makes up for in comfort. This fact especially shines in areas such as watching videos or reading text, particularly with websites that are not formatted for mobile devices. (While it is great to use something like Anki with nice big text, I admit it’s more effective to use that on a more pocket sized device, doing a few card throughout the day, here there and everywhere.) Personally, my 10″ tablet is also meant to be a substitute for my laptop when away from home, so the large size plays a bigger role (pun intended!).

Conclusion - I tend to use my phone more for some things, and my tablet more for others, although I have both set up for everything. Here’s my typical usage for each device when it comes to Japanese:

• Phone - Anki, music, games (basically things that I want to be able to do anywhere and everywhere)
• Tablet - Video, websites, comics, eReader (basically things that I want to be able to sit back on the couch to do)

If you can only select one device, I would probably say go with a smartphone if you can foot the bill, or a smaller tablet if you’d rather not pay for data usage. If you can get both though, definitely do a smartphone + large tablet. Whatever your choice is, you will certainly be happy using it in your Japanese learning adventures!

Non-immersion tips

A bit of advice for getting the most of your device when, especially when on the move!

This method works for mobile devices too!

• Always bring your charger with you. It’s too easy to forget and then suddenly be on low battery when a good opportunity to use it comes up!
• In extreme situations you can even get a second/extended life battery to be really sure the action never stops!
• A protective case is a must. Rubberized ones are the best in my opinion. These devices aren’t cheap, but the cases are, so protect your investment!

Thank you for reading! I hope that getting on board with a mobile device will revolutionize your Japanese learning just like it has done to mine!

 

Kanjirific Game of the Month (February)

Another month, another game for kanji!

This game is more of a learning aid, but it feels like a game to be, testing me and giving me happy music when I am successful. This game is also in Japanese from Japan! What better way to get that good ol’ Japanese in?

DS陰山メソッド 正しい漢字かきとりくん 今度は漢検対策だよ!

Kageyama Method: Tadashii Kanji Kakitori-Kun – Kondo wa Kanken Taidaku Dayo!

  (image from playasia’s website)

I stumbled upon this game a long time ago when I was simply looking for Japanese games for my DS. This game came highly recommended for learners and I couldn’t pass it up. When I first put it in, it was a little intimidating because I didn’t know much beyond kana and some kanji. It didn’t prevent me from doing a lot in the game however, and it has aided my ability to produce good looking kanji and more importantly correct stroke kanji. This game also gives you lots of practice filling in blanks type of questions for kanji and their associated sounds.

You can purchase the game easily in Amazon.jp and playasia’s website. I personally used playasia at the time due to extreme lack of Japanese skills at the time, and must say was very happy. I got the game quickly and had no issues with their site for all the games I’ve purchased so far.

Sporktacular has a great deal of videos about this game and you can find them starting here. His is the older version which has almost 1 thousand less kanji, so I would get the 2nd release linked above. Though from what I can tell about his videos, they still look very similar.

What I personally like about it you get:

Kakitori (かきとり):

This section has all your kana, and kanji from the official jouyou kanji (1,945). I’m sure it doesn’t reflect the most recent changes to the jouyou actually now that I think about it because the game was released in 2008 I think. You come to a calendar that lets you know when you’ve practice last, and the little professor dude says things like hi, take breaks, and study well sorts of things. Then in the main feature you’ll have a grid on the left and tabs filled with kana/kanji on the right. You can see your percentage grade on each attempted kana/kanji with a click of a button.

If you click on a character you will have these options for both kana and kanji. You can write the character from memory, or you can view the stroke order on your left. You can also choose a shadow version on your drawing side to help you out. You can erase the character if you feel you could have done better, if not you hit the button to move forward to grading. It grades based on a lot of things, stroke order, spacing and proportioning, and so on. You can view tips and actions that will improve your writing and choose to redraw or move onto the next character in line. At any time you can leave this section.

The difference between kana and kanji however is that you will see a small book icon on the kanji character’s screens. This basically opens up a little mini menu that gives you helpful information about the kanji. You get readings, meanings, and vocabulary words in sentences. Its a pretty helpful tool if you’re still learning about kanji.

Honestly I’ve used this section more than any other section to start off with, due to the fact that at the time my Japanese was not advanced enough to move onto the other sections. Navigating to this section is really easy and does not require you to know Japanese at all. Fiddling around with buttons will not mess you up in this section either.

Drill (どりる)

I’m not sure if these sections are the same in both versions, so I will be explaining the version that I specifically linked. This section starts off with 6 options.And then within each option you have the chance to get a tutorial, or to begin. From there you will have additional options. They’re basically school levels, the top is the lowest school grade and last in the top school grade. So the more kanji you know (if you base it on school level) the higher student level you’ll want to pick.

Many of them will have the book icon on the right hand side which will give more information about the kanji involved.

漢字（かんじ）- kanji – The explanation is pretty simple, you are given a sentence with a blank, and you will see the kana for it, you write the appropriate kanji. Sometimes you can even have multiple entries in one sentence to figure out.

部首　（ぶしゅ）- radical – Basically this one will show a kanji, and a part of it will be in red. You have to choose the name for the radical. I’m not sure if this is really helpful, unless you’re planning to be a guru of kanji.

類義語　（るいぎご）- synonym – This game is a stretch your mind game, it basically gives you a word, then you’re suppose to come up with a word that is similar in meaning when it only gives you a part of the word and the sounds. Sometimes I cheat and use a dictionary to help me!

対義語 （たいぎご）- antonym – This game is just like the previous one, except it deals with opposites. Lots of fun! These two really help create word combos in your head!

四字熟語 （よじじゅくご） – four-character idiomatic compounds – In this example you’ll be given a 4 character idiomatic compound with a kanji missing. with the provided kana, your job is to figure out the kanji that fits. This is difficult! Regardless if you get it right or wrong, you will get information on the compound.

熟語構成　（じゅくごこうせい） – idiom configuration – honestly, I have no idea what this is about! haha. From what I gather from the game, you choose one of 5 options, アイウエオ, and each are…explanations like, the two kanji’s conflict, or are the same, or so and so forth. Not sure AT ALL…so if anyone has insight on this section of the game, post away. I’ve never really played this section much at all.

Last you have the third option, as if those fun drills and information wasn’t enough!

Measuring Kanken (漢検対策)

This section is kind of a wrapping it up tester. If you select the bottom of the two options available you can set your grade level. Mine I think is set to 1. It basically reduces the difficulty of kanji (in terms of meaning for schooling in the Japanese system) and often has simple concepts. This testing is basically a review. It shows you the kanji in a sentence and you have to figure out the sounds (kana) associated with the red lined part. You can also view stats on the kanji you’ve learned and you can exit out with the bottom green option.

While I suppose some can argue that this game isn’t a ‘game’ I consider it a game since I play it on my ds. Nothing says lets get it on, Kanji! like a ds. If you didn’t know, DS is a non region coded device and can play games from Japan without any special requirements. You can also set the DS into the Japanese language. Overall this game as been a go to for fun. The stylus can be a little awkward if you’re not use to writing with one, but I got over that really quickly early on. I also noticed that knowing stroke order allows me to read calligraphy easier.

Hope you enjoyed this month review of a game for Kanji! Stay tuned next month for a prominent or made up game!

 

Setting Up Japanese Text on Your Computer

Japanese Text on Your Computer!

As I talked a little in the last post about not needing a Japanese only keyboard, I thought that it might be mighty helpful to tell you guys how to go about getting the input set up on your computers. If you haven’t done so yet, I’m sure you might be a little hesitant about it too, but it’s actually quite painless and there are lots of sites talking about it too. To boot, you really don’t have to worry about a Japanese keyboard because lots of Japanese people use a Japanese/English keyboard themselves. In fact, out of all my native friends over there, they all use the same input method I’m about to show you.

Luckily the input method is kind of straight forward. While there may be a few things here or there that aren’t exactly logical, most everything thing is. If you know your kana, then this will be a cinch. If you don’t know your kana, I suggest you back up and learn it. It makes it very hard to try and type in a language you don’t even know!

Most srs/Japanese learning books/systems out there will use what’s called romaji. While romaji is the devil, it does prove to make typing a lot easier. For instance, if you want the symbol “あ” to show up you simply type “a”. If you want the character “か” to show up, you type in “ka”. While there might be a few variants between mac and pcs, the input should be pretty much dead on the same. It even accounts for names, places, and special katakana that I’m sure you as a beginner has yet to seen.

There is a lot of inputs that can change into symbols to make for some epic typing to your friends as well. For more information on that, I’ll simply defer to Koichi’s post from Textfugu.

So if you’re not excited yet, well, pooey on you! Typing in Japanese can open the doorway to a lot more possibilities than typing romaji ever would. Once you switch to the real deal your learning abilities should skyrocket compared to a life of romaji. Learning how to use your input isn’t so hard either, and learning the number of character to type with is easy cakes!

Windows!

The linked guides will also show you how to view Japanese on your computer as well. If you see a bunch of empty or numbered boxes, ???? strings, or weird symbols, its most likely because you’ve yet to install the Eastern Asian Languages on your Windows.

Since I’m all about recycling good information out there in the world, I’m simply going to direct you to the right places already out there. That’s the great thing about the internet. Luckily Robert Y. Eng has laid it all out for us!

Win 2000 Pro |   XP |   Vista |   7

While Win 7′s guide is written by Coscom, they do a good job with pictures and it’s not that different if you were use to the set up from XP and Vista. Windows takes a little work to get started, and sometimes bugs out though. Try not to let it get ya down! haha.

Mac

Not having owned a Mac myself, I can’t tell you how accurate the setup is, however a lot of sites mirror this post from Coscom about how to set it up. I’m guessing no matter which OS you have set up, it’s all pretty much the same. Lovingly Mac must have realized a lot of people want to learn Asian languages because it’s already installed on the Mac. Just a few clicks and you’ll be set up in no time.

Feeling Shaky?

If you’re still a little iffy on how to go about inputting and you know your kana tables, I’d recommend Coscom’s typing lessons. The lessons go step by step with lots of pictures and easy layout to follow. They even have input charts complete with all the new and weird Katakana! You can simply print that out and have it near by for any issues you may be having! While I may not be a fan of their lessons and such, you cannot pass up their typing guide if you’re new to it.

Good luck all you Japanese typing fiends and have fun!